My Only Issue: Crystal Purity

[Minnow]

This game is absolutely fantastic, but one thing I've found frustrating is the crystal junctioning system. I don't know about anyone else, but I find it so frustratingly constricting due to crystal purity. It encourages me not to do anything with my crystals and just play the game with base weapons. I've pretty much stopped junctioning altogether, which is really unfortunate because I want to. I wish they developer would get rid of purity.

[小龙马]

I think it is a way to prevent it get too powerful too fast. They do provide some edge for you even for low level crystal. Not really neccesary need insert your equipments with high level crystal to win the game.

For me, i currently just fuse and use what i got or able to, didn't attempt to maximize it. If i got the neccesary crystal to make a level 10, that great, if not, i will just use it as it is.

However, I do agree that it is hard for those who wants to min-max it and will need a lot of grinding(or crystal gathering in this case) and hope for the best.

Though, as of how it works now, I agree that it does need some brush up in some way.

[TBonety]

So I'm not sure if this is a bug or intended but you can make say a Crit up X which raises crit by 15% and you can socket it into an armor, then take it out and itll be a Crit Up X with 0 purity and a 3 socket crystal. But then you can just grab like a Crit Up 1 thats got at least 1 purity and is only a 1 socket crystal to turn your Crit up X into a Crit Up X! that only takes up 2 slots instead of 3.

[Brasten]

The Crystal system as whole is a major drag on the game's over all design. It really is not good design. There is of course the lack of repeat documentation, which is a different but contributing problem.

The choice to degrade Crystals when removing them from Weapons and Armor is needlessly punishing. Free swapping is already prevented having to do it an Anvil, meaning during various controlled sections of the game, the player cannot just retool to every encounter. It also punishes experimentation and encourages hording. It's almost pointless to work with Crystals until the ultimate weapons are obtained.

The combination system (again documentation lack) becomes an exercise of slot it and guess to see if you can get any combinations. And again we run into the degrading system, which is not fun or interesting. Using it to try and control scaling too fast is a weak defense as there are other better ways that have been designed over the 30 years of JRPG development. This kind of punishing RNG grind system an anachronistic throwback, better suited to the more aggravating of Gotcha mobile games. Or "Free to play" grind wall games. It does not belong in a single player JRPG.

As final pain point, you can't even vendor trash Crystals for money to buy and upgrade Weapons and Armor.

To fix this the system needs an overhaul.

For a start, power scaling could be hard capped by chapter progress. Simply put Crystals of certain levels can be combined until pre-coded Story quest line progression. This means that the balance of combat (already kind questionable) can be better controlled because the player power level with Cystals will always have known maximums (hoarders who cap out every time at story progression) and minimums (never slots a crystal).

Quality can be removed completely, it isn't needed. Size can be reexamined for combat balance and used for encouraging certain kinds of load outs. The stat progression can be better balanced to not blow out key story combats.

Remove RNG. Again, this would help provide better balance and pacing to combat. With a set amount of Crystals, appearing in set locations, the character power curve is easier to control. The choice to make Crystals RNG is out of step with the rest of the gear progression and even monster encounter design. It's taking a 90s design style and using it rather carelessly, without the greater thought that seems to have gone into the rest of the game design.

[Lezard Valeth]

mm guess i was right about it, you can't really play around with crystal (equip/unequip) and experiment freely with it right ?, that's major downside for sure, either need a rebalance patch (ex limit by story progression) or either a mod.

[Ciaran]

It's pretty abusable, once you get the system down. You can very easily fuse things to tier 1 (potency III) or tier 2 (potency V), and it's useful to leave them at those values, as removing them from equipment will reset them back down to their base values for their respective tier.

For example, Agi Up IV, when slotted into equipment and subsequently removed, will return to Agi Up III (the base potency for tier 1). Slotting an Agi Up IX and removing it will similarly return to Agi Up V (the base potency for tier 2). Potency III and V crystals will not see any change (in regards to their potency) when slotting and removing them from gear, though.

So, knowing that those values are the most useful for leaving crystals at also means that it's perfectly okay to slot them into gear without worry of losing excess purity. You see, a newly acquired crystal with potency 2+ and even a single purity can combine into a tier 1 crystal that's formerly been equipped to an item and removed to create a tier 2 crystal that can immediately be put to use. Once you have two tier 2 crystals that you're using, you can use any purity 2 crystal of the appropriate type to fuse them together into tier 3.

Slotting crystals and removing them is an important way to make them available as material crystals for fusion again, so there's no reason to hoard them as long as you remember that simple rule of thumb.

[Minnow]

I beat the game and am now just min-maxing for the super boss. Holy ♥♥♥♥ does the crystal system ever suck . Unless I'm missing something, there's no way to sell or drop crystals. My inventory is full of garbage elemental resist crystals and everything has zero purity, so it's essentially impossible for me to do anything with anything anymore. The game in general is good, but boy oh boy did the dev ever ♥♥♥♥ the bed hard on this one aspect. How anyone could have created this abomination and not fixed it by now is beyond my logical understanding.